Che Gossett

Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellow in the Humanities

2009—2010 Forum on Connections

Che Gossett

History

Queer Resistance, Neoliberalism, and Social Memory

My paper focuses on the memorialization of Stonewall through the 2009 “Rainbow Pilgrimage" campaign, as well as the city's dedication of Compton's cafeteria in San Francisco in 2006 and the ways in which both serve to preserve and construct social memory. I am interested in the ways in which inclusion is mobilized as a technology of governance and domination, enclosing radical spaces and dreams (Stonewall and Compton's Cafeteria uprising) into the fold of the state, while failing to address the needs of the communities out from which those acts of resistance and desires emerged. What does the recent designation of Stonewall as tourist site by NYC officials mean in a neoliberal context? Finally, I plan to explore the affective responses to Stonewall and Compton's and how the monumentalization of sites of resistance coincides with teleological narratives in which queer insurrection and trauma are seen as vestiges of the past.